In the dream, he could feel the once-solid rock beneath his feet trembling. He gripped his rough, knotted staff until his fingers ached from bending, as though that could steady his mind. Though he faced towering tsunamis and collapsing peaks, he hoped the pain could return him to the waking world.
And just then, the Cataclysm struck without warning.
A jagged fissure suddenly split the ground beneath his feet, like a gaping, bloody maw about to swallow him. With a shout, he half jumped, half fell aside, losing his grip on his staff. It dropped into the ever-widening throat.
Amid winds that lashed like whips, Drek'Thar clung to a jutting ridge of rock, trembling with the shaking earth. His eyes, which had long been unable to see far, stared fixedly at the boiling, blood-red sea below.
Huge waves battered the sheer cliffs, sending spray to unimaginable heights. Drek'Thar could even feel the scorching heat bursting from the foam. That searing temperature could not possibly have come from ordinary fire elementals running wild. The old shaman also smelled a powerful stench of sulfur, which was not a scent fire elementals carried either.
What evil creature could be emerging from beneath the earth?
Drek'Thar clearly sensed the elementals' screams of terror, pain, and pleas for help ringing endlessly around him. He felt everything they suffered as though it were happening to him. Already, many elemental creatures had been enslaved, but he could not see what evil monster had enslaved them.
The rumbling grew ever more violent. Under his terrified gaze, the blood-red sea parted, revealing an enormous mass of land. It kept rising, seemingly without pause, until, in the blink of an eye, it towered like a mountain and stretched as wide as an entire continent.
Just then, the ground beneath Drek'Thar